UN: Iran has enough uranium for atom bomb

Feb 20th, 2009 by mikecg

If the UN knows that Iran is smuggling weapons and does nothing, and knows that Iran is enriching uranium and does nothing, then what exactly is the point of the UN?

(FT) Iran has now built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had now accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz. If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The new figures come in a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday.

This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.

(full article here)

Meanwhile, Obama is extending his hand to Ahmadinejad and Ahmadinejad is spitting in it: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for change in US relations but says nuclear issue is ‘closed‘.

—UPDATE—

I’m bumping this because I just stumbled upon this report: IAEA finds new uranium traces at Syria site.

So basically in the near future, Iran is going to have nukes, Syria is going to have nukes, and as I mentioned earlier this week, Jordan is going to have nukes.

Anyone up for a midnight Dr. Strangelove marathon?